LOLcats

Inevitable as it was, we’re still privileged and excited to report that Lewis & Quark’s creative neural network (previously here, here and here) has been assigned the task of naming cats and kittens.
A feline rescue shelter in Alabama reached out to robot’s proctors and asked if they might gin up some positive press and find these animals good homes. Some names come across as a little too alien or arch—like Lord Magian, Parihen the Thawk, Teaw Mos Tilypsronvynkor, Haldir of the Saleword Barga, but most are quite fitting, like Mag Jeggles, Mumcake, Mister Hinkles and Big Wiggy Bool. Go to the link up top to see a whole gallery of these very special cats up for adoption and learn more about cultivating one’s own learning algorithm.

billions and billions

Writing for The Atlantic, correspondent Adrienne Lafrance share her extensive and dogged research in solving a mystery she encountered while studying the resurgence in interest in the Voyager programme, those two message in bottles dispatched and committed to the void four decades ago.
Generally, I am not one to hold others in suspense but I also don’t want to spoil the surprise that’s revealed in an excellent crescendo of engineering ingenuity and curating the gallery of sounds and images that will our ombudsmen to a future alien civilisation. The Golden Records, whose makers believe that if the crafts are not catastrophically destroyed will be playable in the for at least the next billion years, contain a sampling of Earth sounds meant to convey a sense of culture and the ecology of the planet. Many of the Foley artists are credited and known (go to the link to hear the whole album) but not for the voice behind the genuine laughter close to the beginning. The investigation teaches a lot about the production of this mission and the identity of the laugher shows that Voyager was not just a scientific expedition but also a cosmic and timeless love letter, which is probably the best sort of message to send out and hope that it’s a representation that we can live up to.

6x6

underground sundae: recreating the lost psychedelic commercial that Andy Warhol made in 1968 for a Manhattan family restaurant franchise

lad culture: Sir David Attenborough narrates a typical British night out

dumpster honey: revisiting a disturbing requiem for Nature in the Anthropocene epoch—and yes, it was the insecticides all along

chiaroscuro: stunning night time photographs of Japanese playground equipment

cubismo: Spanish street artist Belin produces hyper-realistic graffiti portraits that evoke Pablo Picasso’s elements of cubism and the surreal

alive, son of awake: a look at the tradition of fantasy and speculative fiction of the Muslin world that precedes European Romanticism by centuries

ehe für alle

Of course there’s pragmatism and politics behind the passage of equality of marriage for everyone as some wonkier kill-joys are pointing out but it’s also pride month and the Chancellor herself states she had a change of heart by an encounter with an inspiring lesbian couple (despite voting against the measure) and there has been overwhelming public support for the issue for a long time.
Critics are not particularly upset with the issue at hand and knew it was inevitable to join the rest of the European community where it’s already been legalised for some time: Denmark (with the exception of the Faroe Islands), Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg, Portugal, Ireland and the UK (minus Jersey and Northern Ireland)—but rather because by reaching out to her opposition, the Chancellor is making politics too boring by defusing any real stakes and ensuring she holds onto office due to voter apathy. That’s strange logic but the measure nonetheless that passed with typical German efficiency insofar as it was not even on the legislative agenda until earlier in the week.  Though civil union status has been accorded to same-sex couples in Germany since 2001 and extended most of the benefits and rights of matrimony to same-sex partners, being equal in the eyes of the law creates uniformity in inheritance, taxation and adoption. Gut gemacht, Deutschland!

hug of death

In a brilliant encore to the outlet’s most popular post from a year ago on telephone number trivia and other artefacts of the exchanges, Tedium expounds on more weirdness—for American audiences, to be found be found on the line. Ranging from the history behind automated services, like dialling a number to get the time and temperature (which people could not get enough of and often broke the switchboards), familiar operator voices, to unusual numbers to call (mostly the antecedents for humourous 404 landing pages) and how one used to request web pages by facsimile, the article covers a lot of ground and offers a lot of avenues for further investigation and entertainment.

snake-oil

As Quartz magazine reports, no matter where one is on the political spectrum, Americans are still united in quackery. An analysis of ingredients show that most of the “wellness” products hawked as advertising marginalia on the websites of both left- and right-leaning propagandists are the same—just packaged and touted differently.
This natural and mostly unproven, untested pharmacopœia is derived from Ayurvedic herbs, exotic minerals and obscure mushrooms and make pretty dubious, miraculous claims. Any of us want would want a shortcut to achieve our better self—and perhaps the popularity of alternative treatments is grounded in the precarious state of healthcare in America (though by no means do they monopolise the market on gullibility) and has ylang-ylang punching above its weight—but the shortcomings or successes of arriving at a goal without taking the necessary intervening steps can From colloidal silver to nascent iodine, explore in depth how the differing “nourishing tonifiers” and tonics are able to cross the aisle and bridge the political divide.